Breaking the Curse of Bigness

An Eco-Steps non sequitur... 

Breaking the Curse of Bigness

Resilience depends on diversity, but banks and businesses just keep getting bigger. How can we break the cycle?

by Stacy Mitchell

posted Apr 07, 2010

photo by D'Arcy Norman

If we were to boil the financial crisis down to its root cause, we could sum it up with former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ phrase, the "curse of bigness.” The crisis was caused by massive industry consolidation, which leads to destructive corporate behavior because the decision-makers at these vast institutions are so far removed from the impacts of their decisions.
Perhaps the best way to understand the problems inherent in an economy that separates actions from consequences is to look at its opposite.